I personally find FC difficult to use. I would like to start a conversation aobut some ideas that may not be new to many of you but that may lead to concrete tasks that may improve FC.

As a begginner, FC was very confusing me due to the high amount of workbenches available and too many options available. It would be nice if the UI was more task oriented.

Taking inspiration from other software packages, you pick a task and the UI adapts to that. For example, when you want to create a part, only related stuff is shown but in FC the user is expected to know what every workbench is used for in order to get started. Once you know about Part Design workbench, FC is quite easy to create following the suggestions in the Tasks panel, but the first step is not intuitive.

You are probably right - and it is difficult to see for longterm users. Do you think of newbie versions for all or some workbenches? Or do you think about a basic "Newbie Workbench" which contains only basic functions? What should be in such a workbench?

You are probably right - and it is difficult to see for longterm users. Do you think of newbie versions for all or some workbenches? Or do you think about a basic "Newbie Workbench" which contains only basic functions? What should be in such a workbench?

The problem I see is that maybe the workbench concept makes sense from the developer point of view but maybe the final user should not care about that...

Maybe the workflow should be organized even before the user reaches the point where to select the workbench. Maybe even when creating a file (?). Other cad solutions clearly split what a part is, an assembly, a simulation etc by means of different file types.

I agree that some workbenches should be streamlined and simplified but I think that adding a "newbie wb" or taking buttons out of normal wbs will not make our UX comparable with other solutions available.

Maybe we should analyse how FC is used and show a workflow diagram so that we can design around it (?).

I see two ways:
1.
create meta workbenches where workflows over different workbenches are combined in menu lists.
I used this approach some years ago for teaching: give the pupils tasks list they have to run.
The concept works but the users have to discover the workbenches later to find all the nice other methods

we also have toolbar and pie menu tools which support and refine this approach.

2.
a machine learning solution:
the system tracks the actions of the user and gives suggestions for the next steps.
the knowledge database of an expert can be reused by a beginner.
fot this case we have to develop a tracking system.
a graph database which connects actions and counts how often connections are called in a special context.

From reading over it diagonally I kind of remembered about Ansys Workbench UI concept. I think it may be a good way to organize FC projects now that have so many workbenches.

Could be. But looking at the image (as somebody that newer used it) i am not exactly sure what button i would press first. Therefore i don't know if such UX is trying to addressees the "new user friendly approach"? It expects some prior knowledge for it to start making sense?

@microelly2

Basically providing more straightforward options available for end user customization. As i doubt we will do that by default in FreeCAD anytime soon.

P.S. Maybe someday we could try it out with the Complete workbench. But trying to gather general consensus on what to put in it by default. That would likely prove to be difficult task to achieve.

I used Ansys Workbenches. It allows you to establish a workflow to perform several tasks. But what justifies this approach are the many simulations tools that the program has. CFD, CFX, thermal, etc, etc. In fact, you can set up the workbench's parameters and make it work without open the workbench itself. This speed up the process of work considerably.

Not sure if you need to improve the workflow speed in FreeCAD now.

::bitacovir::
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Maybe the workflow should be organized even before the user reaches the point where to select the workbench. Maybe even when creating a file (?). Other cad solutions clearly split what a part is, an assembly, a simulation etc by means of different file types.

This is one of the more helpful ideas to me in understanding why people complain about FC's UI. The general pushback is "parametric CAD isn't easy", and I'll grant that, but the UI is too open. The fact that some commercial CAD systems constrain the workflow by forcing different files for different flows makes a lot of sense.

My solution was to use the tabbar addon to expose the workbenches I use most frequently - it's a really valuable UI element to me. However, I still feel creating saved "workflow views" would be ideal - basically, auto-populating the tabbar with workbenches that are most relevant to a certain workflow. It seems it would help accommodate users who prefer the more constrained, file-based workflow...

I do agree with Joel about TabBar (but better just it’s new and independent Selector), it’s a perfecta and needed replacement for the simple WB list.

I also think lots of default WB are not commonly used and should be taken apart from newbies or general public (for instance: robot, image, ship, render, mesh, ...). I don’t mean they should be removed but not displayed, if an option to disable WB is available in Preferences, an medium or advanced user always can enable them and use them. Something like how the Selector works.
In addition it would be handy if the WB visibility are grouped as “areas” and for example if you just want to 3D print a newbie can just enable it and just Part Design, Part and Sketcher are enabled.

I think it’s not so difficult to implement it as some code could be used from Selector but, of course, official developers should think about this new focus and agree to move on.